29 August 2018 - 3 Classes

Generally good sessions today covering some early-stage material in tech-comm and assignment introductory work in "Writing New Media." 

Both TC classes went quite smoothly.  Covered letters (part of a two-part "memos and letters" assignment), and introduced the first major assignment:  two letters, one memo, introduced to varied stakeholders.  Questions were germane, conversation was fluid, though I do feel like I talked too much....tends to be the way of it in early weeks. 

Writing New Media was a bit different.  Students did not do much of the reading, as I feared, and became frustrated.  My warnings regarding the density of the content were clearly a turn-off, so I'm going to find work that's a bit more gradually difficult.  Dropping them into Phaedrus was too much.  This week they have scholarly articles as well, but they are at least contemporary.

Turned class around with participatory exercises in identifying old media forms.  They got the hang of it quickly:  Song, dance, recitation, painting, sculpture...and then we identified old media purposes:  Community-building, identity, instruction.  The assignment is still perhaps a bit weirdly ambiguous for them, but I think most of them are getting it.  One student after class called the assignment "Caveman Memes," which was both hilarious and accurate - I'll call it that from now on, and reduce the Ancient Greek stuff by a bit.

Week 1 Reflections

I've been at FIU for a grand total of 14 days, and I'm already impressed with the students coming through here - hard working, attentive, and energetic. It's difficult to find coherent take-aways after just one week of teaching, and it's doubly hard to do that sort of reflection after the rushing energy of week 1, but I'm going to try to record my most salient thoughts.

1) I was advised early on that there may be some language difficulties here as it is a leading HSI / HSU, and most students speak English as a second language.  In my experience, however, my students are overwhelmingly able to understand me, and I them.  Whenever there *is* a communication breakdown, they have been quick to ask for clarification and to meet me in the middle. I owe it to them to learn Spanish, and will be redoubling my efforts.

2) I'm still learning my way around this campus, but it is becoming familiar.  My "dead reckoning" is a bit off as I have on more than one occasion assumed I was exiting, say, an east-facing door only to pop up in the north, but I'm working on it.

3) Teaching a hybrid course (three this semester in fact) is not without its own challenges, which I am learning to navigate.  The biggest issue has been coming up with online content worthy of replacing in-class discussion.  I will continue to refine this.

All in all, I'm very happy to be at FIU, and I'm looking forward to the challenges this institution will present.

Syllabus Cool-Down

Every semester, I write new syllabuses (syllabi?  Silly-bye?), and every semester I have to talk myself down with the following reminder:

1) you can't cover everything
2) the harder you try to cover everything, the less service you'll do to anything
3) you can go back and change it later

This is just a heads-up to any instructors who, like me, are spending time right now trying to get their courses together and are flipping out over making sure every detail is perfect.  Let's all take a deep breath and a step back. 

Trust the students to do the work and to do it generously.  Approach it like a game, treat it like fun, and it will be fun.  Treat it like a prenuptial agreement, and it's going to provide all the joy of a root canal.

Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time blogging here to remind myself that this can be a really exciting part of the school year.  PROTIP:  D&D and Syllabus design are actually *really similar*